These Games We Play
by Burnedtoasty
Summary: G1: What's a 'con to do with one wing mate down and out, when options are few and exits narrow? Evidently wibble. Pre-earth, Cybertron.


**Disclaimer**: _I, in no way, shape, or form, own the Transformers© franchise or the characters it contains. All publicly recognizable characters are copyrighted to Hasbro, and the respective artists/writers/et cetera. No infringement intended._

**Continuity**: G1 (Generation One), pre-Earth

**Characters**: Skywarp, Thundercracker, Starscream

**Warnings**: None.

**Author's Note**: This has been sitting quietly on my hard drive forever, gathering dust and questionable fuzzies. I'm not entirely happy with how it turned out, but I'm unlikely to work on this further. So, what the heck, sharing is caring, and all that rot. Criticism encouraged, technical points preferable.

--

"He's done for. We should go now, while there's still opportunity to do so."

Skywarp hunched himself forward protectively, fretting over the feeble, broken figure that, once upon a time, had been Thundercracker. He prodded uncertainly at a pitifully small section of intact plating, trying very hard to ignore the way sparks leapt from the metal at his mere touch. "Hey, wake up, tank-bait. We've got to get moving. Hey. TC?"

The shattered seeker groaned quietly. Fluid seeped down from between the joints of his throat, pooling steadily beneath his head. Skywarp, at a loss, tapped the little section of remaining blue again, his face held in an expression of vacant horror. Primus. It wasn't supposed to go like this – there weren't even supposed to _be_ any Autobots in this quarter. They had gotten lax, sloppy in their assumed supremacy.

If he had seen, if he had _known_ that that sidewinder was coming, he could have easily averted the disaster, warped Thundercracker to safety. They could have been out of there within a second, beyond the ragged line of Autobots, back into the husk that was once Kaon. Thundercracker would have sworn at him, shoved him away and groaned that warping made his gyroscope go all funny, and Skywarp would have said something snooty in response, and Starscream would have come tearing in and yelled at them for leaving him out there and everything would have been fine.

But he didn't, and he hadn't, and everything was most certainly not fine.

In the background, Starscream scoffed, and resumed his restless pacing, optics turned toward the narrow gap that was their only viable exit. "They'll regroup soon," He commented lightly, not bothering to glance back at his battered wing mates. "We're scrap if we stay here much longer."

"We need to get to a medic," Skywarp said anxiously. "We radioed in a joor ago. Where is everybody?"

"Idiot. They've already retreated." Starscream muttered, flopping down in a decidedly melodramatic manner. He slapped out with one hand, sending a rusted piece of unidentifiable metal careening off the edge of their refuge and clattering down into the chasm that was once a lift shaft. The sharp clang echoed off raucously into the stillness, like a garbled condemnation. Both he and Skywarp started, and silence reigned for a few precious moments while they listened for enemy response. "What makes you think that any self-respecting Decepticon would come all the way back _here_?" His shrill voice was ground down to a begrudging tenor, and his optics were a sullen, dull red.

Skywarp, in a remarkable moment of perspicacity, read the implication, subtle as it had been. He frowned mightily, and placed a possessive hand on Thundercracker's buckled wing. He immediately snatched the limb back away when the nearly unconscious seeker whimpered in pain, and made a soothing coo in the back of his vocalizer to amend for the thoughtless gesture. "No. We have to take him back with us."

Thundercracker's fingers twitched feebly, and his mouth fell slack and limp, a spark jumping across his lips. Though by no means a professional in medical fields, Skywarp took that as a bad sign.

Starscream harrumphed, evidently feeling his point had been made for him. "Do you expect me to help you _carry_ him back?"

"He's our wing mate," Skywarp argued with surly persistence. "We can't just _leave him_. If… if we used our anti-gravs and stuck to cover…" He trailed off, looking up hopefully.

"And what a _fine_ target we'll make," Starscream waved a hand dismissively, a sneer twisting his lips, "With every sharpshooter within the vicinity thanking us for our kindness. No; it's either we leave him here and return later to fetch him, if he survives, or we _all_ get slagged. I, personally, am not going to hang about playing nursebot. You can do what you will; I'm not staying."

Anxiety had made Skywarp imprudent. His face twisted into an aggrieved snarl as, accusingly, he jabbed a finger in Starscream's direction, shouting, "It's _your_ fault he got hit in the first place! If you weren't such a slagging coward—"

He barely managed to throw himself out of the way, the burn of laser fire scorching along his outer thigh. Starscream rose up, livid, firing again as Skywarp warped to the far corner.

"What the slag are you doing?" The teleporter yowled, before again transporting himself away from another hail of null-rays. He reappeared behind his wing leader, crouching down and immediately springing up for a tackle. Starscream, however, proved the quicker, dipping out and aside and using his momentum to pivot about, training his primary weapons back onto a recovering Skywarp's back.

The teleporter was not quick enough to dodge the close range fire. He emerged from his warp with an ignoble squawk and a clank, falling heavily back to the floor, his wing smoking where light weapon's fire struck him.

"Are you a coward too, then?" Starscream sneered, walking over and kicking the downed seeker in the side.

"S'not the same, you crazy frag-drone," Still stubbornly belligerent, Skywarp heaved himself up to his hands and knees, gracing his commander with a churlish glower. "You let TC take the hit that was meant for _your_ sorry core, you stupid, selfish terf-dart."

"Keep talking like that, dearest Skywarp, and I promise you that not in ten thousand orns will they be able to find all your pieces." He let his arms drop back to his side, and resumed his post by the entryway, adding insult to injury as he turned his back on the temporarily thwarted Skywarp. "It's prudence to dodge an incoming missile. Perhaps Thundercracker should have been more aware of his surroundings."

"He was watching your flank. You didn't even bother to call out a warning." Skywarp mumbled disagreeably, making his way back to Thundercracker's side. His wing mate's condition remained unchanged, though whether or not that was a blessing was anyone's guess. He didn't have the medical knowledge to pinpoint the worst damage, or repair much more than the superficial; he had never needed to. Thundercracker never got hurt, not like this. He always watched himself, knew exactly what was going on around him.

The image of a bloom of orange and black expanding from the periphery of his vision again loomed up, and fresh anger rose. "You coulda hit that missile out of the air. I know you coulda."

"True," Starscream acknowledged guiltlessly. "A waste of energy when it was a much simpler matter to just move aside. Was I remiss to overestimate Thundercracker's flying abilities?" He sighed, and turned back again. "Let's leave now. I promise you, if we're able, we'll come back to retrieve him. Perhaps even with a medic, if any managed to keep their sorry scrap in one piece."

"I'm not leaving TC behind," Skywarp stated firmly, fumbling to clasp Thundercracker's hand, gratified by the tiniest of squeezes in return. "He wouldn't leave me here."

Starscream chuckled dryly, the sneer tilting down into a more than slightly condescending smirk. "Oh, please. We're _Decepticons_. What perverted universe to you live in to think that he wouldn't abandon the both of us here in a nanoklik?" He waited for the reality to sink in for a moment, then, in the crooning voice he usually reserved for convincing a livid Megatron to not succumb to the alluring temptation of blasting his treacherous self into oblivion, added, "Survival is the name of the game, Skywarp. He knows that. _We_ know that. Sometimes there have to be losers."

Skywarp made a desperate, keening whine. He understood the logic, and most of him even agreed, but this was _TC_ they were discussing, not some random mech! How could Starscream even consider deserting him in this slag-pool of a city-state? "I could teleport him," He said suddenly. "All the way there."

"With your energy level? You would lock up not halfway to the bunker. We'll barely get there as it is."

"But…" Skywarp hesitated, optics flickering in consternation. The hand in his squeezed again, fingers twitching in the barest of margins.

Starscream, sensing the weakening in his trinemate's resolve, pressed home his advantage. "Would you die for this?"

Skywarp leveled a forlorn look at his commander. It was blatant, and it was honest; they would perish, if they remained. The Autobot's fliers – even as inferior in skill and model as they were – would overwhelm them with their sheer numbers in the tiny space, and they would most certainly be killed. Their unit was getting further away by the moment, removing all chance or hope for rescue. Every second was a liability, another thing tilting the odds out of their favor.

He looked inside himself, thought about self-sacrifice, and if he was truly prepared to die for another mechanism. Even for one as close to him as Thundercracker. Considered all the times TC had gone back for him.

For the first - and perhaps only - time in his existence, he looked at his own mind, with all its flaws and virtues, and asked himself if he could do the same. If he was as willing to risk his own destruction for this.

... He wasn't.

He had never hated another being as much as he did Starscream in that moment.

"… No." He extricated his fingers from the desperate, fragile grip of Thundercracker's hand. The heavily damaged seeker moaned and writhed, groping at the flooring for comfort. Skywarp turned his back on the pathetic display, coming to terms with himself. He wasn't a hero, and had never even begun to consider himself such, but he still felt a coward, the prickling disquiet of morals mocking him for weakness.

_It's the name of the game_. He thought. _TC would understand_.

"I'm glad you've chosen to see reason. Come." Pleased with himself, Starscream made his way to the entrance, scanning the immediate airspace. His grin was immediate and feral, and he beckoned lightly for his lone wing mate to follow. The Air Commander, without a backward glance, stepped out of their dilapidated hideaway, transforming and shooting for the horizon at his top speed.

Skywarp's mouth twisted down in a look of savage loathing, but he nevertheless followed, pretending he couldn't hear the soft whimpers of agony behind him over the sound of his own thrusters.

There always had to be losers in this game the Decepticons played. And one day, he swore to himself, he would see Starscream on the wrong side of the team.


End file.
